After the Crisis: New Directions in Theorising Corporate and White-Collar Crime

Something is rotten in the body of criminology. At a time when evidence of corporate harm, white-collar criminality and corruption abound, our discipline finds itself in a state of paralysis; a state in which we seem unable to offer credible explanations for developing forms of crime and criminality, precisely when such explanations are urgently required. We do not appear to possess the theoretical tools to respond to crucial contemporary events such as the ongoing global economic crisis, the endemic criminality in the News International empire, the explosion and subsequent haemorrhaging of oil from the Deepwater Horizon, or the seemingly unending series of international financial frauds which have emerged over the past quarter of a century (see Levi, 2008). Moreover, not only have we failed to generate adequate critical insights into the genesis of these harmful activities and events, we have also failed to theorise the contexts in which they are reproduced and virtually given up suggesting alternative forms of social and economic organisation which may reduce their incidence (Dean, 2009). If this latter aspiration is thought to lie outside the remit of the criminological discipline (see Loader and Sparks, 2011), it is our contention that we must re-incorporate broader political aims and ideals into the criminological enterprise.